Oracle Agrees to Acquire Sun Microsystems — The Oracle Corporation, the technology information company, announced Monday that it would acquire a rival, Sun Microsystems, for $9.50 a share, which would value the transition at $7.4 billion. — The deal with Oracle came about two weeks after I.B.M. ended its talks with Sun.

Oracle to Buy Sun (and MySQL) for $7.4B — Updated: Less than a month after it walked away from a $7 billion deal with IBM, Sun Microsystems says that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with database and enterprise software giant Oracle. Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash.

Oracle buys Sun; Now owns Java; Becomes a hardware player — Updated: Oracle said Monday that it will buy Sun Microsystems for $9.50 a share in cash, or about $5.6 billion excluding debt, in a deal that plunges Larry Ellison & Co. into the hardware market. The company added that the acquisition …

Apple netbooks manufactured by Foxconn rumoured — Apple sliced down to netbook size? — WE'VE PICKED UP ON some Chinese whispering which would have us believe Apple could be about to release its very own netbook, with Foxconn Electronics chosen as the fruity toymaker's main manufacturing partner.

Foxconn to land Apple netbook order, says paper — Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) is in the running to land orders for a netbook from Apple, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report citing sources from the component supply chain.

Have we arrived in the post-Windows era? — Microsoft knew this day was coming. This was the reason it desperately wanted — no, needed — to take down Netscape in 1996. Netscape wasn't just trying to build a program for reading text and photos across a network of connected computers.

Adobe Flash secures set-top deal — Adobe has secured a deal to put its Flash software into many of the chips that go inside TVs and set-top boxes. — It will enable developers and content providers to create applications to deliver web-based content such as news, weather and share prices to TV screens.

AT&T doubling 3G capacity — Tweaks to the HSPA network will bring 3G capacity up to 7.2 Mb/s even before AT&T implements next-gen wireless technologies — AT&T is in the process of doubling the capacity of its 3G networks, using software enhancements to squeeze one last boost in bandwidth …

How the man in a van outsmarted Microsoft — Ric Richardson ... money not that important. — Picture: Steve Holland — He has been called a “born creative thinker” and “a man of extraordinarily high principle”. Others consider his inventions frivolous and derivative.

Apple jumps 32 spots into Fortune 100 — Reflecting a strong 2008 in which its sales — if not its stock price — jumped sharply, Apple (AAPL) this week made its first appearance in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 since Steve Jobs' return. — Apple has been a Fortune 500 company since 1983 …

The Twitter Revolution — The brains behind the Web's hottest networking tool. — San Francisco — “Twitter is the side project that took,” says company co-founder Biz Stone, 35. “Now it's our chance to do something transformative.” — When I arrive at Twitter's headquarters on a recent morning …

Washington, D.C. will be 1st to get free mobile TV — Washington will be the first U.S. city to get free digital TV broadcasts for mobile devices like cell phones, laptop computers and in-car entertainment systems, broadcasters were set to announce Monday. — Broadcasts using new …

Digg Ends Exclusive Ad Deal with Microsoft — Digg is ending its two-year-old exclusive ad selling relationship with Microsoft, one year earlier than the deal was set to expire. — The two will continue working together on remnant and so-called “network reserve” inventory.

Former Yahoo Music Exec Dave Goldberg to Head SurveyMonkey — Former Yahoo music head Dave Goldberg-who has been an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital since he left the Internet company more than two years ago-has finally landed at another company, sources said, taking over as CEO of SurveyMonkey.

Cooliris Adds Facebook Support for Cooler Photo Viewing — Cooliris is a browser extension that lets you browse photos, videos games and news stories from various websites. A new Facebook application for Cooliris is taking the browser extension to the next level with Facebook-specific media …